


Let This Empire Burn

by KlayterMcCabe



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-10 01:47:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5564287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KlayterMcCabe/pseuds/KlayterMcCabe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Character study of the Stormtroopers en masse and Kylo and Hux as a dyad. Where Kylo is soft, Hux is empty—what's scarier, a man desperate to hide his weakness, or a man who's barely there?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let This Empire Burn

**Author's Note:**

> blah blah blah only saw the movie once, not gonna see it a million times just to try to memorize dialogue
> 
> blah blah blah not researching shit so when the Force Awakens coffee table book comes out I'm sure all my little histories will be wrong af
> 
> blah blah blah i hope you like it

What Stormtroopers have the most of (other than casualties) is time. Time spent in groups, doing the mindless maintenance that the First Order requires to run, time spent in cafeterias eating nutritious sludge, time spent in dormitories after the lights are off but before anyone falls asleep. Without families or personal histories, they create new mythologies for themselves, and at the top of this one is Supreme Leader Snoke, elusive and powerful but rather dull to gossip about, especially knowing that he could pull that gossip straight out of your head and leave you a bleeding wreck.

Just below him are General Hux and Kylo Ren, and it's hard to say who is more terrifying, though occasionally Stormtroopers on dull stretches of guard duty try to hash it out. Kylo Ren is an obvious choice: armed with the Force, unpredictable, a penchant for temper tantrums that occasionally end in murder. When General Hux orders a murder at least there's logic to it, and he's no more force sensitive than the average Toydarian. The General never carries a weapon, and was once himself a victim of Kylo Ren's outbursts. He had a bruised throat for days, but above it he wore a smirk, and maybe it's this that makes him so intimidating: the ability to make a wound look like an accolade, to smile in the face of pain.

 

(There's been a rumor going around, quite apart from the mythology: a Stormtrooper went AWOL.)

 

You can only perform so many massacres, lead so many escorts, guard so many private quarters, before you begin to learn a person's history, and once one Stormtrooper learns something, they all know it, so that General Hux and Kylo Ren have become familiar subjects.

They know that: Kylo Ren is strong and therefore terrifying, but his strength is built around a dangerously soft core. He rages as a child rages, because he is accustomed to getting his way. That: Kylo Ren is the product of a loving family, a heroic legacy, cherished from birth by his parents and coveted by his enemies. He has known power and influence from childhood, which makes his ill-use of them something of a surprise. That: Kylo Ren is fulfilling expectations of greatness, but he flounders at the cusp, debasing his own exalted destiny out of sheer bewilderment, perhaps out of resentment at destiny's weight.

They know that: Hux is Coruscant trash, someone raised not by parents but by other guttersnipes, with a hunger at his core that no amount of food or glory will ever fill. He wears his First Order uniform with the pride of a man who once wore rags, and he fights every petty battle like a starving man for scraps. That: no breach of etiquette is forgiven, because etiquette is what separates men from beasts. Hux remembers the patience of the powerless; no insult is heard without reprisal, but sometimes reprisal is a long time in coming. That: Hux is a product of the chaos created after the Empire fell, and only through order does he believe in salvation.

 

(Not just "a Stormtrooper," the stuff of urban legends. It was FN-2187 in one of Phasma's units who went AWOL, and he isn't dead yet.)

 

Neither man talks much, and neither treats lesser men like equals. But Hux is prone to drink and Kylo Ren is prone to rages, and in these weak moments both have stories they like to tell.

"People are animals," says Hux, with the careful diction of the very drunk. "Sentient races invent rules and pretend it's science, trying to separate themselves from beasts. But people _are_ beasts. Left to their own devices they breed out of control and then eat their own young. Not literally, of course. Usually. But look at you, standing here."

This might be directed at any Stormtrooper.

"Why did your parents sell you out, do you suppose? Money for food, money for drugs? Money to support other children, whom they preferred? Or did you even have parents? Were you already abandoned when the First Order picked you up?"

No Stormtrooper dares to answer these questions, and no answer is necessary for Hux to continue.

"What we are doing is creating a better empire. The only thing that _really_ separates men from beasts is duty, and without someone to enforce the laws, men will abandon their duties at the least provocation. Imagine a world where no one is born like you were, unwanted, a resource left to harvest for any grotesque purpose. You're lucky it was the First Order that picked you up, and not organ dealers or pleasure slavers.  There is glory in duty, you know, as long as one is willing to pursue it by any means necessary."

 

(FN-2187 didn't get away, he turned around and came back to fight. He isn't just AWOL, he's a traitor. How can that be, that someone who never uttered so much as a seditious word has come so far in the other direction?)

 

"Of course you can't understand what it's like," says Kylo Ren. "No one does. I've given up everything to be here, and everything might not be good enough."

As if the idea of sacrifice is foreign to Stormtroopers, who throw their lives away on bad orders and brilliant tactical strikes just the same.

"It can be difficult," Kylo Ren might say, having destroyed equipment that will take days to repair, "to harness and suppress the power of one's anger."

But Stormtroopers are not allowed the luxury of anger or any other feeling, and if they dare to experience it, they'll be sent into rehabilitation until they're numb enough for battle once more.

"I'm not afraid to die in the service of building an empire," says Kylo Ren, standing in a ship full of thousands of men who are not afraid to die.

 

(FN-2187 fought Kylo Ren and walked away.  A Stormtrooper picked up something as mystical and powerful as a lightsaber, and he fought one of the leaders of the First Order until a Jedi came and rescued him. Nothing about this fits into the mythology. Not Stormtroopers standing against leaders, not Stormtroopers wielding lightsabers, not Stormtroopers being worthy of rescue by greater men. Something is happening here. Something has changed.)

 

"I can build an empire," say General Hux and Kylo Ren. "I can lead it."

 

(But maybe no one should build an empire. Maybe what's left of this one should burn.)


End file.
